


The Deepest of the Deep

by tiredwriter



Category: Gravity - Fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-14
Updated: 2013-10-14
Packaged: 2017-12-29 08:51:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1003413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiredwriter/pseuds/tiredwriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The last moments we didn't get to see.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Deepest of the Deep

Letting go of the tether was both the easiest and the hardest thing he had ever done. It was his duty to see that his crew got every chance at survival. At the very least, he now knew he'd be breaking that spacewalk record. He had come to terms with his likely death the moment Houston ordered them to abort. In fact, they'd lasted longer than he thought they would, but, in his experience, people lasted longer when they had someone else to live for. He had gotten the pretty doctor to the ISS when he didn't think it was possible and he had let go. Now she had to live, or his sacrifice would be for nought. He thought she might make it.

As he drifted out of radio contact and the ISS got smaller and smaller, his thoughts turned to his family. He was leaving behind countless nieces and nephews, but no children of his own. His own person had died years ago, before he even joined the Navy, before he finished college. That's what made letting go easy, he missed her so much. The doctor might have lost a daughter, but she hadn't yet found her person. As he gazed down at the Earth below, he thought about how lucky he was. Not many would ever experience the awe inspiring sight of the sunrise over the horizon from outside the confines of the atmosphere.

He wouldn't ever have to suffer the ravages of old age, the entrapment of an infirm mind. As deaths went, this wasn't the worst way to go. Slowly filling a chamber with carbon dioxide was they way they did it with lab mice, and apparently, astronauts adrift in space. He supposed he could open his helmet and be done with it, but he was a fighter and he wanted to make damn sure he recorded the length of his spacewalk if he could. There was some small hope he'd get one last contact with at least one of the space agencies back on terra firma.

There was a letter, the same letter, rewritten six or seven times now. That he left on his kitchen table, every time he went out on a mission with no guarantee of return, first as a solider and now as an astronaut. He had always wanted his goodbye to be on his terms. He thought of that speech Nixon prepared but never had to read, what those two men never had to know but that he knew now: there was no hope of rescue. He thought of that day in 1986 that brought tears to his eyes, yet, unlike those families, his body was unlikely to ever be returned. He was buried alive in the orbit that would be his grave.

Sometime, well after he shattered the record, his oxygen ran out.

"Houston in the blind, it won't be long now, O2 is at 0%."

"Matt!"

"Houston?"

"It's us, we're here."

"I've got a bad feeling about this mission."

The laughter that came over the com was tinged with tears and his answering chuckle was no less so.

"Did she make it?"

"Yes."

"It's gonna take someone a long time to break my record."

"Yeah."

He had expected his final moments to be alone, he knew it was just minutes now, already detecting the symptoms of oxygen depravation. He rolled away from Earth, he had already said his goodbyes. He stared into the night sky, for the sun was behind the planet now, awed by the cloud of stars that made up a spiral arm of the galaxy they called home and comforted in an odd way to know that by looking at these stars, he was a part of the universe looking at itself.

**Author's Note:**

> I own nothing, there are several references and lines that aren't mine, they also belong to their authors. I saw this, and despite my aversion to 3D, was beyond impressed. I felt Matt deserved his say.


End file.
